It's unlikely that houses in the industrial park are more expensive than in the city, isn't it?"
"In recent years, more and more talented people have come here, so of course the price of housing has gone up."
In the eastern corner of Suzhou, there is a magical piece of land that generates 15% of the city's GDP on an area that only accounts for 3.5% of Suzhou.
This is where the Suzhou Institute of Nanotechnology and Nanobionics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is located. Since its inception, this institute, jointly established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the local government, has made the transfer of scientific and technological achievements and cutting-edge scientific research together its founding principles. In the words of Liu Peihua, Secretary of the Institute's Party Committee, Suzhou Nano Institute "not only wants to be 'on top of the sky', but also 'on the ground'".
Xu Ke, a researcher at the Suzhou Nano Institute and a member of the National Thousand Talents Program, is one of the stars of the Industrial Park. He and his team set up Suzhou Navi Technology Co Ltd, whose products are widely sought after despite being "small and thin".
The company produces a new type of LED substrate, gallium nitride substrate wafers. Unlike traditional sapphire and silicon carbide, gallium nitride has obvious advantages: it can improve the working life and luminous efficiency of the device, and is theoretically the most efficient material system for electro-optical and photoelectric conversion. According to some data, compared to traditional chips, the energy consumption of LEDs made on GaN substrates is reduced by more than half under the same brightness.
Previously, this technology was mainly controlled by foreign companies, but Suzhou Navi, the first Chinese supplier of GaN substrate wafers, was founded in 2007 and has already gained a foothold in this emerging market. With more than 30 core technology patents, the company's products have been sold overseas and are bringing core value to users in new-generation display, energy-saving lighting, power electronics, medical imaging and other industrial sectors.
Xu Ke told China Science News that he had been working on this research before, but it wasn't until he came to Suzhou that the lab results actually turned into tangible products. "Before, our team was just a few people, all researchers. When we arrived here, we quickly brought together relevant entrepreneurial talents. Once the innovation elements were gathered, it was much faster to do things."
Xu Ke may not be aware that his own personal experience is one of the lessons repeatedly worked out by the Suzhou Industrial Technology Innovation and Incubation Centre of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since its establishment in 2009, the centre has been acting as a magnet, attracting a steady stream of innovative resources from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and from home and abroad to Suzhou.
"Suzhou has a well-developed economy, but it is very different from the surrounding cities." Jing Zhenqiang, director of the Incubation Centre, admits that the industrial park, for example, is stronger for foreign companies, with more than 100 of the Fortune 500 alone. The R&D departments of these companies are all overseas and are not too keen on Chinese products.
This situation gave Jing Zhenqiang and others the idea of nurturing a number of new companies in Suzhou.
However, a new problem arose. Scientific research institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences have cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements, and it is difficult to attract venture capital immediately. "So, we have made a forward move to match scientific and technological achievements." Jing Zhenqiang said, in the research staff before starting a business to give them financial support, so that they use 1 to 2 years to do some preliminary research and development, for the birth of the product, the enterprise is ready to start.
In this "gestation" stage, the incubation centre is not idle. The centre has to provide a series of supporting services for entrepreneurs such as business registration, environmental assessment declaration, human resources, financial outsourcing and legal advice.
For example, in response to the fact that many people come from scientific research backgrounds and lack a business background, the Incubation Centre has set up a "high-end industrial talent training programme" and regularly invites business mentors in the fields of finance and management to the Centre to hold salon activities, establish communication between incubated projects and business mentors, and provide advice for project development. The centre also provides advice on project development and accelerates the transformation of research technicians from scientists to entrepreneurs.
Everything is done to make it possible for teams to move in with their own bags. It is perhaps these seemingly "insignificant" details that have reduced the risk of start-ups and allowed more and more "Xu Ke" to come to Suzhou, settle here and win success.